EPA Rules Bad for Hoosier Families, Jobs ; COMMENTARY

EPA Rules Bad for Hoosier Families, Jobs ; COMMENTARY

Article excerpt

President Obama promised in 2008 that his environmental policies
would make electricity prices "necessarily skyrocket," and earlier
this month he unveiled his plan to deliver on his word. Starting
next year, the Environmental Protection Agency will force Indiana's
power plants to cut their carbon emissions by 20 percent. The
administration claims that this will save the planet and even
create jobs.

This is merely a slick sales pitch with no connection to reality.
The regulation's real effects will be job losses, higher prices for
electricity and everyday goods, and less economic growth.

Meanwhile, the EPA itself admits that your economic pain will do
almost nothing for the climate.

The misinformation begins with the President's promise that this
mandate will "leave our children a safer and more stable world."

This is nothing but a poll-tested marketing ploy. The EPA's own
climate model shows that this new regulation would reduce global
temperatures by a meager 0.02 degrees Celsius by 2100 - a
statistically meaningless amount.

The environment won't be better off, but the economy will be
ravaged. In May, the Chamber of Commerce released a study
demonstrating the effects of a slightly more aggressive plan.

It assumes a 42 percent emissions reduction, compared to the
EPA's 30 percent rate, but the EPA's estimate is deceptively low.
The EPA rules don't mandate cuts from actual carbon dioxide
emission levels from 2005. Instead, they're based on hypothesized
numbers that might have occurred if Indiana had agreed to the EPA's
every demand. The Chamber study is thus the best guide to these
regulations' real-life effects.

Indiana - which generates 84 percent of its electricity from coal
- will be hard hit. The EPA rules mandate that it reduce its carbon
dioxide emissions by 20 percent (every state's number is
different).

In order to meet this goal, the state will have to close down
low-cost existing power plants and force utilities to purchase
electricity from new sources, which are almost always more
expensive. …